


The Finished Symphony’s Final Crescendo

by KadeAK (zacixn)



Series: The Tides of War (Dream SMP Season One) [7]
Category: Minecraft (Video Game), Video Blogging RPF
Genre: (sort of. Does it count if he dies?), Angst, Death, Explosives, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Mental Illness, No Beta - We die like lonely terrorists who dream of recieving fatherly affection, Season 1 Finale, Spoilers for 16/11/20, Traitor Wilbur Soot, Wilbur POV, Wilbur Soot Daddy Issues, Wilbur Soot Needs a Hug
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-18
Updated: 2020-11-18
Packaged: 2021-03-10 02:41:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,148
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27616411
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zacixn/pseuds/KadeAK
Summary: "Phil's once soft and kind eyes had narrowed and hardened into ones of pained concern, and Wilbur knew instantly that he was the cause for it. He didn’t fully understand how the hell his father was here in the first place – he’d never been the type to give a shit about Wilbur before, no?Phil was always so focused on praising Techno’s bloodied conquests, or healing Tommy’s countless wounds, that he’d never paid much mind to his middle child. Wilbur had spent his entire life thirsting for any form of attention – why the hell did it have to happen now, right before his ultimate demise? Was life really that cruel?"--It's finally time for Wilbur to blow everything up. Phil tries to stop his son from destroying everything, but it's already too late for him to help.[This work is a Series Finale.]
Relationships: Dave | Technoblade & Wilbur Soot & TommyInnit & Phil Watson, Wilbur Soot & Phil Watson
Series: The Tides of War (Dream SMP Season One) [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1909273
Comments: 5
Kudos: 140





	The Finished Symphony’s Final Crescendo

**Author's Note:**

> Wow, the Soot lineage really is plagued by daddy issues, huh?  
> ...NO I DID NOT POST THIS WITHOUT TAGS INITIALLY SHUT UP

Everything felt like a blur. The forms of the resting soldiers meshed into each-other unintelligibly, blending and warping in lurid shades of Netherite. Wilbur faintly registered that Tubbo was speaking, his words too formal for his high-pitched voice. Whatever he was saying didn’t matter, not really – his victory would be short-lived at best. The people of the new L’Manberg didn’t stand a chance against their fate.

How amusing, no?

If Wilbur weren’t still keeping up his guise of supposed reformation, he would laugh. They all had a falsified hope in this governmental system. He knew the truth, of course. L’Manberg – the real L’Manberg, not the bastardised ideology that Tommy, Quackity, and Tubbo had grown fond of preaching nowadays – had died weeks ago, left bleeding out in the rubble of the fallen walls. The L’Manberg that they had fought for so long ago no longer existed, and sometimes it felt like only Wilbur had come to accept that fact well and truly.

Dream caught his eye from where he sat next to Technoblade. He looked encouraging, even with his white mask obscuring his real facial expression. Of all these warriors, it was almost funny how Dream was the only one Wilbur really trusted. Perhaps there was an unknown bond between leaders who desired true chaos. He glanced back pointedly. The time was coming soon.  
Finally, Tubbo’s speech wound down, and applause filled the air. Wilbur clapped halfheartedly, hands feeling numb despite the warming cloth that clung to them. He noted how, in the background, neither Dream nor Technoblade bothered, barely suppressing the grin that threatened to bloom on his face at the thought of it. In the end, they were his allies. In the end, they were all he had.

The revolutionary stood up silently, his movements smooth. Tommy, who’d been sat beside him, shot him a look of curiosity, blue eyes wide with the drunkenness of victory. His brother thought he’d won. His brother thought they’d won. The thought of it made Wilbur’s heart hurt in a confusing way. Once, Tommy had been his closest ally. Now, he was misguided, intoxicated in the euphoria of their too-easy victory. He was so eager to establish a government, to re-establish the cycle of hate. Wilbur was smarter than that. If his brother could not let it go, he would do it for him.

“I’ll be back in a moment,” he explained briskly, words incredibly stable in comparison to the thoughts clouding his head. Tommy seemed to buy it easily, a placated smile on his face as he returned his attention to his new President. He was so naïve – god, he was always so naïve, never doubtful enough to recognise Wilbur’s true intentions. Tommy’s blind trust would spell his own downfall.

Good, Wilbur thought, despite his baser morality. If he was to end up alone in this finale – if he was to suffer and hurt and choke on his endless inadequacies and failures, then – well, his brother should feel a fraction of his pain, too. 

The walk to the room was not even five minutes, but it felt like an hour. This was the last walk he would ever take in the broad daylight. Wilbur Soot would meet his demise today, for certain, locked beneath the dirt in a bunker made of lies. Lies, lies, lies – that was an apt way to describe their anthem now, no? Once they had been true, penned out of his foolishly blind faith in democracy, but now, every lyric spilled toxic untruths that were sure to choke any man who dared to sing them.

Wilbur ran his hands along the mad carvings as he approached them, the stone cold to the touch. He remembered etching each letter in a manic state, the shadows pressing in from every corner and whispering lies into his ears. Now, his mind was clear – crystal clear, actually! Wilbur liked knowing his fate for once, the feeling of his future buzzing on his fingertips like the after-hit of a strength potion. He wondered if Phil would be proud of him for his newfound enlightenment.

With a soft exhale of exertion, Wilbur sat in his seat – the final control seat – and stared down his button. His magnum opus, crafted coarsely out of less-than-fine oak and wired up to his fate. He’d pressed it once, and it’d failed. Hell, it might even fail now. A little nostalgic part in him quietly hoped it would, and the man muffled it in one fell swoop. The bombs would not fail him today.

“I’m going to do it,” he said aloud, as if he needed the verbal reaffirmation, breathy voice tinged with a tone of disbelief. “If I’m going to do it, it’s going to be now. Here, or never.”  
A breath in, a breath out. Just a few deep, steady breaths to steel his nerves. This was it. The finale. L’Manberg would be no more.

Closing his eyes involuntarily, Wilbur reached out to touch the button, fingers outstretching in a cruelly holy display.

“Wilbur, what are you doing?” A voice rang out into the room, too crisp to be a hallucination.

The questioning voice startled Wilbur into the forefront of his mind, grounding him painfully and suddenly. His hand snapped back as the world suddenly turned up in volume. It was never easy with this server. It could never be easy. Someone always had to come and fuck his salvation up. Who was it this time? Tubbo, here to try and save his new nation? Tommy, back to look upon him with his eyes of pity? Quackity, here to reassert his political superiority over him again?

“Oh, to hell with it,” he snarled, lip curling slightly. “I can never get a moment alone, can I? Do you really think you can--?”  
Wilbur turned around before he could utter his complaint’s final words, heart freezing with the sight he laid his eyes upon.

Leant against the wall stood Phil. His once soft and kind eyes had narrowed and hardened into ones of pained concern, and Wilbur knew instantly that he was the cause for it. He didn’t fully understand how the hell his father was here in the first place – he’d never been the type to give a shit about Wilbur before, no? Phil was always so focused on praising Techno’s bloodied conquests, or healing Tommy’s countless wounds, that he’d never paid much mind to his middle child. Wilbur had spent his entire life thirsting for any form of attention – why the hell did it have to happen now, right before his ultimate demise? Was life really that cruel?

Phil hadn’t earned the right to keep Wilbur as a son, he decided. His words could sway him no longer.  
(The little sane part of his mind reminded him of his own neglect of Fundy, of how he perpetuated the cycle of bad fatherhood, and Wilbur once again muffled it.)

“Wilbur.” Phil repeated, taking a step forward. “What are you doing?”

Despite himself, Wilbur laughed, running a loose hand through his hair. Fear brought on mania, and he could feel himself slipping to the blind panic.  
“Well – you know, don’t you?” His voice barely shook as he motioned to the button behind him. “You know what this button does, right? You know, Phil?”

Unsurprisingly, Phil made an affirmative noise, stood in place with regretful disappointment dancing in his eyes. Wilbur felt himself bristle at the sight of it. Phil hadn’t earned the right to be disappointed in him.

“I – and you know these lyrics, my lyrics!” His arms spread out wide, gesturing madly to the words that littered the wall like the ravings of a lunatic. “You must know the anthem, right, Phil?”

Once again, Phil nodded, eyes shadowed with something Wilbur could not properly identify. Still, he continued, placing his hands on his father’s shoulders in an excitement he could not place.

“Yeah, yeah, of course you know. I should’ve guessed, you’re smart!” He stepped back in order to be beside the button again, heartbeat picking up as he caught sight of it for a split second.

“Well, they used to be very true. We did have a special place! L’Manberg used to be a special place.” Wilbur continued to speak rapidly, words spilling out of his mouth as he turned his back on Phil to overlook the lyrics once more. “But – we don’t anymore. I guess the lyrics are more right now, then. There was a special place. Was. Not anymore, though.”

“But-“ Phil spoke up again finally, and Wilbur noted how he sounded so unsure of himself, pausing to recollect his thoughts. “But, you’ve finally won. With today’s victory, L’Manberg can be a special place again. You don’t need to blow it up anymore, son.”

Wilbur laughed again, fingers ghosting over the button’s surface. It was cold.  
“Don’t call me son,” he said, voice dropping suddenly into an icy register. “You’re not really my dad. Don’t kid yourself, Phil.”

Phil seemed to recoil at that – serves him right! Wilbur felt his lips quirk into a smile, glancing backwards to see the look of regretful horror painted all over his face.

“You know, there was a traitor once – I don’t think you know him, Phil. I hated him at the time, but he, he – he was just like me, I think. How funny.” Wilbur could feel everything at once, every doubt and insecurity and fear rushing through his system like a whirlwind of torment. His vision began to blur around the edges, the image of the winged man fuzzing and twisting as the mental pressure only continued to build – Wilbur would need to do this now, or he never would. Time to wrap it up.

Phil opened his mouth to speak, raising a hand in an attempt to outstretch it in support, but Wilbur continued before he could utter a syllable.

“He had a saying, you know. He had this big, menacing phrase. It really fucked me up, actually – not that you’d know that fact!” Wilbur’s voice was almost giddy, and he laughed sharply to punctuate. “Phil, do you know what that saying was, hmm?”

His father seemed to still. “…I don’t,” he said quietly, voice thick with grief. Why was he grieving? Phil had nothing to grieve for. His sons – his real ones, not whatever the hell Wilbur was to him anymore - would thrive in the chaos the button would create.

Turning around to face him, Wilbur smiled, the expression foreign on his face. Fireworks were sounding above the ground – it was finally time for the final crescendo to begin. He watched panic flash across Phil’s face in a split second as it hit the survivor what the man was about to do. His father lunged forward to try and pull Wilbur away, but the efforts were futile.

“It was never meant to be.”

In a fluid motion, Wilbur pressed the button that rested beside him, the soft click all-too-satisfying under his touch. As a threatening hissing noise filled the room, he felt his face soften, the pressure in his head relieving. Raising a hand of his own, Wilbur faced Phil head on, giving him a salute worthy of a warrior’s final departure.

Chaos fell.

The wall behind the two men split, before bursting into rubble, fire and smoke exploding into the room. The chain reaction continued, deafening cracks of world-shattering destruction rippling out of the hill and into greater L’Manberg. Wilbur smiled as he heard the noise of people screaming in the wake of the newly split open hellscape, satisfied as he felt his communicator rumble with an influx of frantic typing and near-death messages. The hot air almost seemed to scorch his back, carrying the acrid smell of soot and smoke.

Phil seemed frozen in shock, blue eyes widened in abject horror. This was his fault, Wilbur thought. Sure, he’d formed L’Manberg, and sure, he’d fallen for it – but Phil had been the very first catalyst. He seemed to know that, too, as he turned to Wilbur almost robotically, face dirtied by residual ashes.

“It’s all gone, Wilbur.” His voice was quieter than expected, almost a whisper among the endless chaos. “You – you didn’t need to destroy it all! You had victory!”

Wilbur took a step towards the man, his trenchcoat billowing out behind him in the kicked up winds of the once-stuffy Final Room. There was only one part left to this story, now. The final symphony had been played to its audience of victims. It was finally time for the conductor to retire.

Phil was talking still, ranting about how he was ‘wrong’. He was always the preacher, wasn’t he? Even back when he’d been objectively in the wrong, Phil just loved acting like he knew what he was doing. Like he understood the situation. Well – he didn’t. Wilbur had achieved his goal. All that was left was for him to burn with his legacy, the way the Sky Gods intended for him to.

Silently, Wilbur drew his sword. Diamond, looted from Techno earlier. The people hadn’t known at the time, but he’d only ever retrieved this sword intending to use it on himself. Having Phil here just streamlined the process somewhat.

“Phil,” Wilbur said, snapping the man out of his talking. “You need to kill me.” His body felt fuzzy, his limbs like stone encased in ice. His ears rang with incoherent thoughts, hardly calmed by the detonation of his creation. If anything, his thoughts were louder, more insistent, calling for blood they knew they would get. A jolt of apprehension ran through his body, and the blade slipped from his hand, clattering to the floor as his hands shot up to clutch at his skull.

“Kill me, Phil. End me. Kill me here.” His once-stable words slipped into a tone of desperation as the pressure reached critical levels, the rhythmic drumming in his skull intensifying into a cacophony of all-too-familiar explosions. They all said one thing, one thing that was crystal clear in the aftermath of the end.

Death is the only escape.

Phil seemed to recoil, looking down at the sword in abject horror as Wilbur pleaded. His eyebrows furrowed.

“Kill me, Phil. Kill me. Killza. Kill me.” Wilbur kept going, his words barely registering in his mind as he spoke them. “End me. Stab me. Leave me to bleed and die.”  
“I – I can’t, you - You’re my SON, Wilbur!” Phil snapped, tone rising in desperation. "You'll always be my son, no matter - no matter what you do."

A cold, sad laughter slipped from Wilbur’s throat, and something bubbled in the corners of his eyes despite himself. People were beginning to gather outside the wake of ruin, watching upon as Wilbur finally crumbled to pieces. He wondered if Tommy was watching him. His brother probably hated him by now, just like Phil did. That was fine.

“You – if you really want me to be your son, if you – if you think I will accept you as a father, then--!” Wilbur choked briefly on his own tears, angry sadness coursing through his mind. “Listen to me for once. For once in your fucking life, listen to me!” He was yelling now, but that fact hardly registered in his head, sight blurred by tears of desperation. “Kill me, Phil! They want you to - I want you to! So _do it_!”

There was silence for a moment, as Phil seemed to survey the landscape. Wilbur watched as he made eye contact with something, and then, he reached to pick up the sword. Taking two strides towards the other man, Phil pulled Wilbur close, holding him in a brisk embrace. Startled into silence, Wilbur felt his blistering anger melt a little, and he pressed his head into the crook of his father’s neck, shoulders shuddering with the weight of his tears.

“I’m so sorry, Will,” Phil said, voice hoarse. “You’ll always be my son. I’m sorry it’s come to this. I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you.” Taking the blade in his off hand, Phil hesitated for a moment, before finally thrusting it forwards in a moment of cathartic clarity.

The cut was clean – straight in the chest. A moment of stillness passed before Wilbur was choking again – not on his tears, but his blood, this time. The coppery smell of it filled his senses, his hands weakly clinging to Phil’s cloaked form as the man discarded the weapon to one side in order to hold his dying son close.

It was pain. Dying hurt so fucking much. Every breath felt like inhaling sand, the blood lining his throat and pouring out of his nose and mouth. Wilbur shuddered in Phil’s grasp, staining his shoulder and his front red as he clasped on tightly. Phil held him silently, feeling his pulse weaken gradually.

This was it. The end of the show. Wilbur’s life had led to this – to his self-destruction. Was he happy? Would he have salvation as a spirit, would the Sky Gods welcome him back? Wilbur’s vision blurred and swayed, spinning on its side as Phil gently laid his weakening body to lay propped up against the wall. He was dying. Finally, he was dying.

“Phil…” Wilbur croaked quietly, blood sputtering from his mouth and splashing down his front. His father paused over him, eyes shining with despair.

“Yes, son?” Phil replied, voice choked up with powerful emotion. “I’m here.”

Despite himself, Wilbur felt his lips quirk up in a smile, his head finally truly clear.  
“Thank you, dad,” he whispered – and then, there was nothing.

\--

They marked Wilbur’s death site with a gravestone, crafted from blackstone that had been salvaged from L’Manberg’s walls. In the wake of destruction, it stood solid and mighty, a testament to the man he’d been in his prime. Phil visited it daily, always sure to leave a flower in his son’s memory. It was the least he could do. He’d always craved attention while alive – though Phil had never supplied it while he was living, maybe he could finally make it up to him now.

Tommy and Techno visited it too, rather often. Tommy would do it in secret, trying not to be seen as he mourned his brother’s death. Techno would hide in the corner of the room when he visited, pretend he was brooding – it didn’t take a genius to realise he was praying to the Sky Gods on Wilbur’s behalf, though. Sometimes, they would visit together, and they would reminisce, and wonder what things could have been like in a better timeline.

They’d had their chance, though. Phil had thrown away his shot. Now they had to live with the consequences.

(Nearby, the lost spirit of Wilbur would watch his family mourn his loss. Every time, he would place a hand on his true father’s shoulder, and for the first time in his existence, he would stay by his side.)

**Author's Note:**

> With Wilbur's death and the formal end of his character arc, this is going to be the last entry to this particular series, as it was largely focused on his character progression. I have enjoyed writing it! Hopefully it lived up to expectations. (I'm surprised that the majority of my past foreshadowing holds up to canon events!)
> 
> I might still write canon Dream SMP fic, though. Who knows! Depends if Ghostbur pulls through on the fact that he's fucking depressed or not.


End file.
